Susan Mikula at George Lawson Gallery
San Francisco, CA. Feb 25 - Mar 27, 2010

In 1911, hundreds of acres of mudflats southwest of Los Angeles were forged into the huge Port of Long Beach, and in 1901 and 1903 major oil refineries that still exist today were first commissioned for Port Arthur, Texas.

Mikula’s photographs of industry at the edge of the country, at the port and those refineries, and on the great stretch of industrialized land between Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico known as the Bolivar Peninsula make up American Device: Recent Photographs. Highly abstracted, and in her characteristically tight chromatic range, these images nevertheless put form more front-and-center than in Mikula’s earlier work. Gantry cranes and shipping containers and catwalked refinery towers are strong figural forms in the foreground. There is a heat-mirage quality to the secondary forms beyond, and to the visible heft of the air, and the sky.

“I’m so drawn to the beauty of these places” says Mikula. “…they’re hidden, almost secret. Either we’ve pushed them out into the no-man’s lands on the fringes of our country, or hidden them behind layers of security [but they] are still a part of the lifeblood of our country and our culture.”

Mikula shot the images in the summer of 2009 in temperatures over 95 degrees, working with vintage 1970s-era Polaroid cameras and expired, soon-to-be-extinct SX-70 film. The images are printed using archival, pigment-based inks on American-made archival paper and are mounted on anodized aluminum.

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MEDIA CONTACTS
Michael Kusek at communication angle
413.575.1435
michael@communicationangle.com

GEORGE LAWSON GALLERY
49 Geary Street, 2nd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94108
415.772.0977; gallery@rfprfp.com
www.georgelawsongallery.com

American Device: Recent Photographs

George Lawson Gallery
room for painting room for paper
49 Geary St., 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94108
Exhibition Dates: February 25 – March 27, 2010
Reception: Thursday, Feb. 25th, 5:30 - 7:30 PM
Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11:00 AM - 5:30 PM

Shipping Now:

“Susan Mikula, Photographs, 2008” is available now from Luxxus Press. 80 pages, 27 full-color plates: Order Online.

9 Portraits.

Nine color portraits printed on nine-foot
swaths of industrial mesh.
~ view the portraits ~

bearings, October 2009
~ view bearings images ~